A tab paper sheet is a paper sheet with a “tab” indicating an item or title to an A4 or letter paper sheet, and so-called “10-tab style” with 10 tabs, “5-tab style” sheets with five tabs, and the like are prevalent. The standard size of a tab portion is ½″ in case of the letter size, but some tab paper sheets have tabs of other sizes. Compared to a normal paper sheet, since a tab is attached and a tab paper sheet is normally formed of a paperboard and often causes paper jam at a convey system in a conventional printing apparatus, most of the conventional printing apparatuses do not support a print process on tab paper sheets. However, in recent years, since the technology of sheet convey systems has improved, a printing apparatus can perform a tab paper print process. A printing apparatus called a multi-function machine having a printer function and the like can print a tab generated on a computer via a printer driver.
However, a printing apparatus can only perform a 1-sided print process on tab paper sheets, but cannot normally perform a 2-sided print process due to its convey system. Since the tab paper sheet is made up of a paperboard, it is technically very difficult to reverse the sheet in the 2-sided print process.
However, since items or titles to be printed on tabs of tab paper sheets represent the contents of documents divided by these sheets, it is very important that they can be confirmed from the reverse face side, i.e., they are printed on the reverse faces.
In order to conquer such physical limitation (i.e., a paperboard cannot be reversed) of the printing apparatus, the following method may be adopted. That is, a tab paper sheet with a tab, one face of which has undergone a print process, is removed from printouts output onto an exhaust tray, and is manually reversed. Then, the reversed tab paper sheet is set on a sheet feed tray or manual insert tray to print only on the reverse face of the tab paper sheet. In such case, the tab direction must be constant with respect to the sheet convey direction in terms of the mechanism of the printing apparatus.
FIGS. 4A and 4B show the relationship between the sheet convey direction and tab document direction. The arrows in FIGS. 4A and 4B indicate the convey direction, and dots in FIGS. 4A and 4B indicate the upper side of the document direction.
FIG. 4A shows an example of the state of tab paper sheets and data to be printed on the obverse face side, and FIG. 4B shows an example of the state of tab paper sheets and data to be printed on the reverse face side.
When sheets are set so that tabs line up from the upper side, as shown in FIG. 4A, tab documents for five pages are prepared in the order of “TAB1”, “TAB2”, “TAB3”, “TAB4”, and “TAB5”.
On the other hand, when sheets are set so that tabs line up from the upper side with respect to the document direction upon printing on the reverse faces of tab paper sheets, as shown in FIG. 4B, tab documents for five pages are prepared in the order of “TAB5”, “TAB4”, “TAB3”, TAB2”, and TAB1”, opposite to that on the obverse side. Such method is very inconvenient, and the user often sets paper sheets in a wrong order.
In order to match tab information to be printed on the obverse face side with that on the reverse side, the user must prepare for two different documents, i.e., a tab layout for the obverse face and that for the reverse face.